Self Reflecting

Haleh Mashian

Acrylic on canvas
30 x 48″ (76.2 x 121.9 cm)

“Self Reflecting” by Haleh Mashian is a bold and emotionally charged exploration of introspection and identity. The seated figure, with one hand resting against her cheek, appears lost in thought, caught between solid form and painterly dissolution. Her posture suggests quiet contemplation, but the dynamic brushstrokes and abstracted color palette hint at the complexity of her inner world.

This composition blends electric greens, deep blues, and fiery reds to create a figure that feels fluid and ever-changing. Her skin tones resist naturalistic definition, reinforcing the idea that self-perception is constantly evolving. The bold red of her legs contrasts with the subdued yellow of her upper body, creating a tension between warmth and coolness, perhaps symbolizing an internal push and pull between emotion and restraint. The stark black-and-white background intensifies this contrast, isolating the figure and emphasizing her solitude, as if she exists in a world of shifting thoughts and self-exploration.

The expressive brushwork and bold outlines recall the raw emotional intensity of early abstractionists and German Expressionism, where feeling takes precedence over realism. “Self Reflecting” is a psychological landscape, a meditation on self-awareness and personal transformation.

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About the Artist

As a painter and creative expressionist, Mashian’s abstract works reveal her appreciation of color theory, compositional form, and studying positive and negative space. Working in mixed media and using various techniques from collage to impasto, a repeated layering and application of paint, Mashian’s dynamic pieces range from smaller artworks that can be arranged together to large-scale paintings. Her large-paneled paintings have been exhibited nationally in Los Angeles, Miami, and are included in private collections in the United States and abroad.